Susanna Wright: Poet and Polymath on the Susquehanna

Posted by on Apr 17, 2026 in | Comments Off on Susanna Wright: Poet and Polymath on the Susquehanna   No right has man his equal to control, Since, all agree, there is no sex in soul; Weak woman, thus in agreement grown strong, Shakes off the yoke her parents wore too long. Those lines of poetry, written in a rigidly paternalistic 18th-century America, establish Susanna Wright (1697–1784) as one of America’s early supporters of women’s equality. More subtly, the poem, entitled “To Eliza...
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Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lancaster County: Diversity of People, Ideas and Economy When Lancaster County was established on May 10, 1729, it became the proto­type for the sixty-three counties to follow. The original three counties­Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester – were created as copies of typical English shires. The frontier conditions of Ches­ter County’s backwoods, from which Lancaster was formed, presented knot­ty problems to the civilized English­men....
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A Country Seat on the Susquehanna: Wright’s Ferry Mansion

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Country Seat on the Susquehanna: Wright’s Ferry Mansion On the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River in southeastern Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Lancaster, Wright’s Ferry Man­sion was built in 1738 for a remarkable English Quaker, Susanna Wright. In 1726, when Susanna was twenty-nine, she purchased one hundred acres in this region on the fringes of Pennsylvania wilderness, then inhabited by a small tribe of Indians and known as...
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When the Susquehanna River Was Pennsylvania’s Flour Highway

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on When the Susquehanna River Was Pennsylvania’s Flour Highway The flour trade industry in the Susquehanna River watershed is one of the lesser known stories in Pennsylvania’s history, but it is among its most significant sagas. Millers were among the first tradesmen to arrive in the New World to sustain the settlers. The Keystone State’s rich farmlands produced abundant flour for local and regional markets with a consistent surplus for export to foreign...
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